(QUOTE) Starving Japanese combat troops used battles as a hunt for food, but noncombat units had to devise other means. Japanese officials dispatched an engineering battalion deep into the interior of what is now Indonesia. The engineering battalion used Indo-Pakistani POW's, former Commonwealth soldiers captured in the fall of Singapore, as slave laborers. One of those soldiers was Hantam Ali. Ali had been aware that sick prisoners unable to work were immediately shot or given lethal injections and then eaten by the Japanese. But by 1944, the Allies were closing in. the supply lines had been cut, and the Japanese had started to eat live, healthy prisoners. Ali told his harrowing story to Australian investigators: "Those selected were taken to a hut where flesh was cut from their bodies while they were alive and they were then thrown into a ditch where they later died. When flesh was being cut from those selected terrible cries and shrieks came from them and also from the ditch where they were later thrown. The cries used to gradually dim down when the unfortunate individuals were dying. We were not allowed to go near this ditch, no earth was thrown on the bodies and the smell was terrible."
The reason the Japanese butchers didn't kill the prisoners outright was that in the tropics, with no refrigeration, the meat quickly rotted So they would just hack off parts of the body to provide a meal without killing the prisoner, then toss him in a ditch, where he would survive another day or two, thereby ensuring that his internal organs remained fresh for later consumption. Ears, noses, lips. cheeks,toes, palms,buttocks, shoulders, and thighs were cut and eaten while the main course remained preserved.
The abandonment of troops with no concern for their well fair was a monstrous crime committed by the Spirit Warriors. The starving Japanese boys were brutalized too. But the debased officers like General Tachibana and Major Matoba, rather than seeing the horror in their comrades' predicament, reveled in the morbid stories as they drank themselves into their nightly stupors. (QUOTE)
The above passage was taken from the book "Flyboys" by James Bradley.
More info on WWII POW's can be found here
The reason the Japanese butchers didn't kill the prisoners outright was that in the tropics, with no refrigeration, the meat quickly rotted So they would just hack off parts of the body to provide a meal without killing the prisoner, then toss him in a ditch, where he would survive another day or two, thereby ensuring that his internal organs remained fresh for later consumption. Ears, noses, lips. cheeks,toes, palms,buttocks, shoulders, and thighs were cut and eaten while the main course remained preserved.
The abandonment of troops with no concern for their well fair was a monstrous crime committed by the Spirit Warriors. The starving Japanese boys were brutalized too. But the debased officers like General Tachibana and Major Matoba, rather than seeing the horror in their comrades' predicament, reveled in the morbid stories as they drank themselves into their nightly stupors. (QUOTE)
The above passage was taken from the book "Flyboys" by James Bradley.
More info on WWII POW's can be found here
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